Because I absolutely had to do at least one chapter or I'd explode. This is inspired by (of course) Stormborn by my queen Blackkat who is on both Fanfiction and AO3, Reawakening by MafiaMamaJ on AO3, and The Violent Tide by my bro (gender neutral in this circumstance because I honestly have no idea what their gender is but they comment on every chapter of Stone Eyes so there) Rae_Kid, also on AO3. I love pretty much everything Blackkat does, so yeah! Keep on writing my lesbian fanfiction Queen! Check their shit out!

Quasi-surreal 3rd person is really hard to write, but its an Uzukage! Naruto fic, so it's also kinda required for at least the first chapter. *shrug*

Also, for some reason I've become obsessed with using flowers for chapter titles. I never should have started helping my grandmother in her garden. I wish there was an accurate description of the looks on my parents' faces when I asked for a rosemary plant for my birthday, especially since I've never shown much of an interest in gardening. Seriously, what normal 19 year old asks for a fucking plant as their birthday present?

In other news, I've named it Rosey because I'm creative like that. She spends six hours in direct sunlight everyday on our front porch and the other 18 sitting happily in my windowsill. I love her, she is my baby. Best present ever.

Disclaimer: Kishimoto-san has yet to reply to my emails.

Marigold- Grief; despair; melancholy

Naruto dreams.

He dreams of a life, a better one here in Konoha. He's still an orphan and still hated for things he can't help, but he isn't alone in this. He isn't alone because there's a woman with red hair like flames and marbled eyes and flecks of sunlight on her skin right next to him, through everything. The woman has black lightning carved into the arm that hangs limply at her side, but that's okay because it looks really cool even when she wiggles it around to force a laugh out of him. Her smiles are full of warmth and a love that he thinks might be for him because who else is there but Naruto doesn't dare hope. She's not his mother, it's made very clear by the way he's always calling her 'nee-chan,' but she might as well be.

Naruto has a sister in his dreams and they share a tiny, one-room apartment, smaller than the one he has now even, and it's on the really bad side of the village, where even residents of the Flower District dare not go, but he doesn't care because all he really needs to be happy is Misaki-nee.

When he's asleep, in a place where the world is just a little brighter and he doesn't need to blind others to bring some cheer into the village, Naruto has friends. His best is Sasuke of all people, who he's always thought a little stuck up. But he's self-aware to the point he knows that watching the other boy from across the park isn't enough to actually judge because how can you when you've never even introduced yourself? In his head, Misaki scolds her little brother for judging a book by its cover and he cowers in fear of her frying-pan revenge.

His apartment is somehow even emptier when Naruto wakes every morning, without the constant echoes of the typewriter he doesn't own or the low gurgle of coffee already brewing. At night, his apartment smells of hazelnuts, frying fish, and gardening soil. Come morning, it is filled with the scent of cheap instant ramen, spoiled milk, and dirty water coming through the ceiling from the apartment above his.

He knows things he probably shouldn't, not yet anyway, like how to mold his chakra better and move without a sound. How to make exploding tags and sealing scrolls and stick to walls and walk on water. Which plants in the forests surrounding the village are safe to eat and how to grow vegetables on his balcony after his apartment gets ransacked (again) and all his groceries burned or stomped on (again). Naruto hides his plants and precious things with the seals Misaki has burned into his memories. Every year on his birthday, when he gets the Hokage all to himself, he seals his belongings into a scroll and no longer worries about the state of his apartment once the festivities have died down. He does this because broken windows and shattered furniture can be covered up or replaced, but the cards he receives from Teuchi-jiji and Ayame-nee can't.

Basic household repairs are easy, for a little while, until the new landlord comes and doesn't let him maintain the water-heater like the old one did. His cheap practice kunai find their shine again when he finds a wet stone in decent condition one day laying innocently by his front door. There is a vague scent of lightning, blood, and dogs left behind that seems familiar but Naruto can't quite remember why.

He remembers when that night, Misaki pulls a masked shinobi with messy silver hair through their door, sits him down at their table and proceeds to stuff him full of food. It's very obvious that he really doesn't want to be here but has long been reserved to the fact he won't be allowed to leave until Misaki is done with him. This jounin smells of lightning, blood, and dogs. Naruto is instantly filled with affection for this world-weary shinobi his sister has dragged practically kicking and screaming into their lives.

Numbers come alive in front of his eyes, he realizes, the first time he's handed their workbook for the year in primary school and he quickly learns that doing his best isn't to be done anymore, not when it causes such fear and loathing in his teacher's eyes as she slaps him for cheating. (In his eagerness, he hadn't heard the teacher say to do only the first page and half, the book was finished by the end of class. He's assigned to a different one by the next morning and he never sees that teacher again.)

He can read books for kids three years his senior on a bad day and write his name perfectly using a calligraphy brush by the time he's four years old, because his not-sister wouldn't raise an illiterate little shit. Naruto hears Misaki laugh and feels her ruffle his hair with her working arm as she grins at him with exuberant pride when he successfully reads his assignment, simply saying 'Well, at least you can read.' He's slammed back into reality when the ink he's using to practice seals is more runny than it should be and his lines are splotchy and he tastes salt on his lips.

Sometimes, Naruto wakes in the middle of the night to loud banging on his walls and the smell of piss and booze in the air, and wonders what he did to be tormented like this.

Two months into his first year at the academy, Naruto learns about the Kyuubi in his stomach. Misaki-nee tells him through tears and begging him not to hate her for lying all this time and the fuzziness of his dreams. He knows to be wary of Mizuki-sensei after that dream, just in case, when the white-haired chuunin (traitor, murderer hisses a voice in the back of his mind that doesn't sound like the happy Naruto, not even the older one) covers for Iruka-sensei the first time. There is a cold hatred in the assistant's eyes, too many teeth in his smile, and it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Mizuki is waiting for an opportunity and a man like him waiting patiently for a chance to kill him has to be watched. Naruto never goes anywhere alone with Mizuki, but doesn't change his behavior otherwise because that other Naruto is whispering in his ear not to, that it'll make people suspicious. For the first time since he was little, he listens to that happy Naruto.

He's realizing that some of the things he learns from his dreams are real and it's beginning to scare him a little.

Naruto knows, without a doubt, that the Yondaime didn't have green eyes like his teachers say, but eyes the color of the sky on a cloudless day in summer. He knows because his are just like the Yondaime's, in his dream-world-that-isn't. They have the same smile and the same unruly blonde hair, but his laugh is his mother's, just like the rest of his face is hers too. He doesn't tell anyone what he's discovered because there is no one to tell and no one to believe, and there must be a reason Jiji hasn't told him yet. He can understand Kyuubi, understand his parents, but only for so long.

There's only so long until he breaks from this not-grief, this what-should've-been. Does his despair even count, if it's caused by a dream?

Naruto sees visions from another life when the sun goes down and this scares him. But instead of telling, he just smiles and laughs and plays yard games with the few children whose parents let them play with a demon's prison.

The new dreams only start when he turns seven and is finally allowed into the academy. Two weeks into their first semester, Naruto finally has a chance to talk with Sasuke and even if he's not as social as the Other(s), he knows his best friend and his quirks.

If only his mouth would open and his eyes blink. "What are you staring at Uzumaki?!" The final bell has just rung and he's grabbed Sasuke by his sleeve and he can't bring himself to say what he needs to. They're standing in the middle of the courtyard and all the other kids are gone, but Itachi and Shisui are right there. So of course, he just does what Misaki would do and mentally goes 'fuck it.'

"Your hair looks like a duck's butt." They are seven years old and his first words ever to his maybe-best friend are insults. Obviously, it's meant to be.

Of course, Sasuke is extremely offended, but (as always, as he's supposed to) responds in kind. "Well, your's looks like the sun puked on your head!" If he were any older, the scowl on his pudgy cheeks might've been menacing, but as a little boy, Sasuke only looks adorable.

"That's not even a bad thing!"

"Uh, yeah it is. Who wants to be covered in sun-chunks?"

"Ew, that's grooosssss. You're gross Uchiha!"

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am not!"

"Are too!

"Your face is an are too!"

A shocked gasp. "…. This means war Uchiha." There's a smile growing on his face and the beginnings of another on Sasuke's. This argument is growing more ridiculous by the second, but both are stubborn and refuse to back down.

Itachi is chuckling and Shisui is on the ground, gasping for air as he howls, and Naruto is trying not to join him, but then sky eyes meet ebony ones and now all four of them are laughing. In those few precious moments, there is a lightness in his heart and a weight off his young-and-not soul and it feels so nice. For once, his laugh isn't false and his grin isn't showing too many teeth, and he feels as if he could just float away.

He doesn't notice the widening eyes of the two brothers and a cousin, nor their matching flabbergasted expressions as they take in his smile and how he just seems to glow with brightness and charisma and something else. They have never experienced anything like it before and that else hits them like an Iwa doton jutsu master they'd just pissed off.

It had been meant as a joke, a comeback for the duck-butt comment, but now Sasuke is wondering if his new friend (Naruto was his friend now? Yes, always, duh.) really is the sun, because Naruto is seeping into everything he touches, bringing warmth and light and life back into the village. A village full of people that didn't, never would, deserve to have the sun in human form living among them. A village, Sasuke admits only to himself, he's never really been able to call home. He's been waiting for years to experience Home as it's been described to him and in the wake of this small (too small), scrawny blonde boy with a megawatt smile, Sasuke's left wondering if this is what all those people meant.

Shisui, with his curly hair and wide grin, both making Naruto's heart clench because Misaki, is still laughing as he claps the blonde boy on the back and shouts to the skies about how he likes this kid. Inside, the elder Uchiha is floored because this little boy has almost the same look on his face that his favorite cousin (after Itachi of course) used to have. Not for the first time, Shisui wonders what it is about his face that always made Obito look so sad and guilt-ridden. Fugaku-oji-sama had explained it away as the result of a border-patrol mission turned disaster, but he'd only been five and entering the academy, and never had the chance to truly ask out of anything more than curiosity and hurt because Obito had died three years later.

Itachi seethes internally, furiously questioning how anyone could ever accuse his pseudo-cousin/little brother of being a demon when he couldn't be anything other than an angel. But he holds in his fury with practiced ease and invites his brother's new friend to eat dango with them. The prodigy's heart clenches at the shocked expression on the little blonde boy's face and Itachi makes a promise to himself to take care of Naruto as if he'd always been by Sasuke's side.

That night, three of them dream of a village of white marble and sandstone, terraces rising up and up into the sky. Buildings and catwalks and bridges in midair spiral up to a tower in the very center of the village, proudly displaying a symbol long thought lost to war and fear. Bright tapestries in reds and golds and blues and greys of all shades billowing in the roaring winds coming in with the green waves, and a marketplace full of a people who are so lively and colorful, they seem born from the banners hanging above their heads. The city is protected by a coral reef that stretches off into the horizon and beyond it are the six whirlpools from which the island's name is derived. But when they awake, Itachi is left only with a sensation of having seen something indescribably beautiful and a deep sadness because he feels in his heart that there is a chance he will never see it in person. Sasuke remembers though, and is excited when Naruto tells him they've shared a dream and how weird is that?

Shisui hadn't dreamed at all.

In the new dreams, the different dreams, he's never that other Naruto, not really. That Naruto has a family and a group of friends to play ninja with, no matter how small either are. There are nights where he's not himself at all, or even still in the village, but a faraway place by the ocean with salt filling his lungs with each breath. Instead, his name is Uzumaki Yousuke* and he wears a hitai-ate with a spiral in the middle that sits snug and comforting across his forehead. He has red-orange hair and eyes that are as green as the sea. Yousuke is an orphan too, but he's loved by his village, who take delight in his prankster ways.

Yousuke had parents at one point, when he was very young. His mother died trying to give him a baby sister who was born too soon, blue and still and silent. No more than an hour had passed after they were both put in the ground and his father left on a mission and returned sealed into a scroll edged in black. He barely remembers his mother's smile or his father's laugh or the strange sensation of his sister's kicking, but he still leaves flowers on their graves and burns them incense in his apartment. He does so until the day he is stabbed in the back with his once best friend's kunai as his beloved village burns to the ground below.

These dreams are strange to him, because he is both himself and Yousuke at the same time. He sees through both their eyes and smells with both their noses and touches with their hands and it's so indescribable as to give him a migraine every morning.

They are never in order, he realizes after a few weeks, because sometimes Naruto/Yousuke is but a child, running and laughing through winding streets that go up and up and up. He is surrounded on all sides by a group of children his age almost every step of the way, members of their little gang changing and flowing around him like the ocean. Yousuke is the moon and they are the tide under his purview. The only other constant besides himself is a sea-haired, sky-eyed, sand-skinned boy named Makoto with a smile like the sun reflecting off the water. This boy is his best friend, his best friend who is steady like a river and has a temper like a hurricane. Together they rule the streets and back-alleys of Uzushio.

Naruto wishes the boy's smile didn't remind him so much of Mizuki.

Other nights, Naruto/Yousuke stands beside Makoto and a girl with hair that matches the sunset and eyes yellow like the sun and skin as pale as their city's marbled walls. Her name is Sango* and Yousuke thinks she's beautiful in such a way as to be devastating. Behind them stands an older man with hair as red as blood and violet eyes (like Naruto's mother) that they all call Kyou-sensei*. Kyou-sensei is Yousuke's cousin, however distant, and together the four of them wear hitai-ates proudly.

Sometimes, he stands at the top of an ivory tower wearing a ridiculously large teal hat and loose robes, with a growing mountain of paperwork on the desk behind him and mutters to himself, questioning why he ever wanted this job in the first place. Beside him, Makoto bursts into roaring laughter, wrinkling his advisor's robes as he braces himself against the wall. The green-haired man smiles and offers to wear the hat instead of Yousuke, who takes it as the joke it was supposed to be.

But Naruto is well-versed in looking underneath the underneath and the falsehoods people will spurt so long as it gets them what they desire. There is a chilling glint in blue eyes and too many teeth hidden in a smile and Naruto is once again reminded of Mizuki. Makoto was not joking.

Yousuke talks to him in the waking world, talks to Naruto in ways that the Happy Naruto does not (cannot) and it's nice to have some company other than Sasuke, who is awesome and talented and still so nice, but they haven't gotten to the point where he feels able to tell the Uchiha everything yet. Yousuke-nii is only in his head though so who's he going to tell anyway? As he talks through his issues with Yousuke-nii, the Uzu-nin's voice gets sharper and angrier and Naruto is afraid he's done something wrong, that his new big brother will start hating him too. Yousuke reassures him that it is not the case and swears that it is the villagers who are at fault. He wants to believe him, yearns to, but can't quite yet. He's had people fake kindness and affection for him before.

Naruto thinks that Uzushio is beautiful, blindingly so, and he yearns to see it in person one day, but there is a deep depression and rage that is not his in the back of his mind. Yousuke is sad and angry, racked with an overwhelming guilt that Naruto can't quite understand yet.

But then Iruka-sensei turns startlingly sober in class one day as he's reciting the history of Konoha. He tells the story of Konoha's sister-village by the sea and its legendary skills in the sealing arts. He shows them a print of an old painting the Shidaime's wife, Uzumaki Mito, had owned and Uzushiogakure no Sato in its prime is depicted almost flawlessly. His classmates are awed by the overwhelming beauty of a long-lost village built of white sandstone and shining marble. Compared to Konoha, with it's wooden buildings in various styles and brightly painted rooftops, Uzushio looks like a place angels reside.

Beside Naruto, Sasuke can't help his shocked gasp because it's the city from his dreams made real in the brushstrokes of an ancient painting. The city from his dreams is (was, he suddenly knows and feels a sharp, agonizing grief in his chest) real and he has to see it in person. He needs to or his very soul might just burst, though he has no idea as to why.

He turns to whisper excitedly to his friend but is stopped by the tears running down the blonde's scarred cheeks. Naruto's eyes are suddenly a swirling combination of sea-green and sky blue, Sasuke realizes with a start, because weren't they just blue a few minutes ago? They are not red and he doesn't sniffle at all, but there is an underlying ache in his best friend's soul that is reflected unreservedly in his expression. Under the table, Sasuke grasps his best friend's hand in his own.

Iruka-sensei goes on to explain Uzushio's legendary techniques in the sealing arts and how even the smallest of the native clans had skill in at least one branch of fūinjutsu. But it was ultimately the Uzumaki, being the largest and most influential clan due to having founded the village itself in the wake of the Senju's formation of Konoha, that was feared for their talents the most.

"Legend has it that long ago, centuries before even the Warring Clans era, the Uzumaki used their sacred sealing techniques to bring the island they'd one day call home up from the bottom of the ocean, manipulating the sandstone, granite, and coral into the white towers and columns the village was once famous for. Supposedly, the act of doing this is what caused the six whirlpools that once protected the island to form. The clan itself never confirmed or denied the claim, but it's possible that the knowledge had simply been lost over time," explained the scarred teacher with a saddened expression on his face.

"Sadly, Uzushiogakure's skills in fūinjutsu are what eventually led to its total annihilation during the Second Shinobi War. Fear of their abilities ran rampant amongst the enemy forces and it wasn't until the combined forces of Iwa, Kiri, and Kumo somehow managed to make it past the island's infamous whirlpools, coral reef, and their seal barrier that the village was destroyed. The Third Uzukage, Uzumaki Yousuke, tried to send his fastest runner after a diplomatic envoy from Konoha that had just reached the mainland in a desperate plea for help." Iruka paused to take a steadying breath. "Neither the envoy or the runner ever made it back to the village and by the time word of the attack finally reached us, it was far too late. The once beautiful Land of Whirlpools was nothing more than a smoldering ruin, it's people either dead or scattered."

The class went still and silent, bowing their heads in remembrance of their fallen allies. Iruka had pulled no punches in this lesson, which was optional and up to the instructor to give. Some had no desire to remember such a failure on Konoha's part, a betrayal of the alliance in some shinobis' eyes. He couldn't help but allow his gaze to flicker to the silently crying blonde at the back of his classroom as he continued. "The only clan that has never been confirmed to have survived the attack was the Uzumaki, who are thought to have most likely been destroyed in defense of the village. The only known survivor was a young member of a branch family who had immigrated here only a few months before. Their only descendant is in fact one of your classmates."

Iruka gave Naruto a sympathetic glance as the rest of the class turned as one to stare at their blonde classmate with wide eyes and confusion and, in some cases, hatred. He didn't seem to notice.

The tears were coming down stronger now but still not a sound escaped the blonde, even as Yousuke-nii explains the destruction through his own ragged breathing and grief-ridden sobs. The once sandaime tells Naruto of the advisor who he'd have once trusted with his life, the betrayal of Hamasaki Makoto*, and the childhood friend turned right-hand man turned traitor.

After the final bell rings and it's time to go, Sasuke insists on staying over at Naruto's apartment, completely ignoring his friend's protests. The young Uchiha had visited his best friend multiple times over the last eight months or so, but was always sent home before sundown because of how dangerous the outskirts of the Flower District become when night falls. Today, he doesn't care about that, or whether he'll get into trouble with his family later because his best friend doesn't need to be alone tonight.

Naruto doesn't mind their impromptu sleepover as much as he'd have Sasuke think, because his apartment seems even emptier than usual that afternoon. He's returned alone because his friend has gone to buy supplies for dinner, which is rice balls, miso soup, and fish. Naruto doesn't remember the last time he had either in the waking world.

He bides his time waiting for Sasuke by caring for his plants and washing his one set of sheets. Naruto has just finished adjusting the cinder blocks holding up the right side of his bed when Sasuke returns, armed with bags of groceries. He's done the blonde's shopping for him and for the second time that afternoon, Naruto cries.

Sasuke's cheeks are a little pink as he plops the bags onto his friend's minuscule countertop. "It's not that big of a deal dobe. Just pay me back later, alright?" Naruto nods and wipes at his eyes with his coat sleeve. The Uchiha pretends that his best friend isn't crying at someone just buying groceries for him and tries to ignore the seething anger that such a reaction causes.

His best friend is the sun in human form and the only reason he should ever cry should be out of happiness.

They spend the rest of the evening doing their homework while waiting for the rice to cook, Naruto carefully, lightly, writing down his answers in pencil only to immediately erase most of the page after checking it against Sasuke's own work.

"Naruto, why do you do that for every assignment? Don't you want to do well?" The Uchiha is very much aware that his friend is smarter than he acts. His pranks wouldn't work as well as they did if the Uzumaki were actually worthy of the title 'Dead Last.'

"Of course I do! It's just... It's better for everyone if they see what they want to see. The adults... the adults are afraid of me, I think." Naruto gives a sad smile and is inwardly panicking because this is a huge risk, telling Sasuke. He's not even supposed to know.

Sasuke can't help but blink. That was not a response he'd been expecting. The very idea of being afraid of Naruto sends his mind reeling from the sheer stupidity of the concept. "W-What? Why would adults be afraid of you of all people?!"

The blonde lets out a mock-insulted noise and Yousuke is in hysterics. "What the hell do you mean by 'you of all people?!' I can be scary!"

"As if dobe! You're about as scary as Akamaru!"

Naruto scowls and launches himself at Sasuke from across the table, scattering their books and worksheets. "Akamaru can't even see yet, you bastard!" The Uchiha lets out a shout of surprise as he's tackled to the ground.

He's gasping for breath even as he struggles for freedom, "Haha... EX-hahahah-ACTLY! HAHAHAHA! STOP IT NARUTO, STOP TICKLING ME! HAHAHAAHAHA!"

"NEVER! I SHALL HAVE MY REVENGE!" laughs Naruto as he tickles his friend mercilessly. The setting sun is shining through his open window, its glow turning his blonde hair orange and his eyes a startlingly bright green. His positioning grants him a halo and Sasuke can't help but wonder.

If his best friend is so bright, why is the world around him still so dark?

The pair eventually tire themselves out with their horseplay and work together through rough breaths to clean up and finish dinner, earlier questions and mental panic forgotten. The rice ends up a tad undercooked and crunchy, and the fish is slightly singed, but the miso is store-bought, so the meal isn't terrible. Naruto thinks that he's never felt so warm and full in his own home before.

For dessert, Naruto pulls out something he's been saving for a special occasion. Sleepovers are special, right?

"Where... Where did you even get that Naruto?" The hot drink sitting in front of Sasuke smells heavenly, and he doesn't even really like sweets.

Naruto grins before taking a sip of his own hot chocolate. In his head, Yousuke is salivating and cursing him. "An okiya girl I know just got back from a 'tour' in Kumo and one of her customers liked her so much, he gave her several containers of the stuff. Since she had so many and promised me a souvenir anyway, she gave me one! Apparently, it's a really popular drink there!"

Sasuke lightly blew at the steam rising from his mug before taking a sip himself. It tasted almost like liquid chocolate! He shared an equally awed expression with his friend. Konoha didn't have anything like this! "…. It's good."

The jinchuuriki laughed. "I know, right!? Almost as good as ramen!" The uchiha rolled his eyes and finished his drink, trying to stifle a yawn. The warmth of it was relaxing. It was also midnight and he was getting sleepy. It'd been a really long day. The friends yawned simultaneously.

"Gah, it's so late! Think 's bedtime 'Kay..." The blonde let out another jaw-cracking yawn.

"I agree... Where am I sleeping?" The Uchiha frowned as his friend's tan skin took on a distinctly red hue. "Naruto?"

Naruto looked at feet, embarrassed by his lack compared to his wealthy friend. Yousuke-nii scolded him for even thinking Sasuke would mind, but he couldn't help the feeling. "I-I don't have a couch or even a futon, so we'll have to share the bed... But if you don't want to, that's okay! I can sleep on the floor, you're my guest, and it wouldn't be the first time anyw-" The blonde blinked as a pale hand suddenly found its way to his mouth, stopping any further speech.

Ebony eyes were hard and a stubborn frown formed on Sasuke's face. "Dobe, shut up. I don't mind sharing the bed." He decided to ignore the implication that his best friend had had to sleep on his own damn floor for the moment. He'd get back to that later. "I share with nii-san all the time when he's home." Sasuke removed his hand from the blonde's mouth and flicked him in the forehead. "Did you really think I'd care about something you really can't help?"

Naruto's silence was answer enough, and Sasuke sighed again, trying to ignore the sudden ringing in his ears. 'Silly Sasuke-chan,' "Moron," "just because you think it, doesn't make it true."* A woman's voice, unfamiliar to him yet infinitely comforting, echoed in his head. He felt strange and a little dizzy.

The blonde openly gaped at him for a moment before a wide smile grew across his face. "You're right Sasuke-teme, I'm being a little stupid aren't I?" Naruto sheepishly rubbed the back of his head.

Sasuke scoffed. "You're always stupid Naruto." His friend made an offended noise even as a mischievous sheen danced across his blue eyes. With a laugh, Naruto ripped off his t-shirt and threw it over the Uchiha's head.

"Last one into their pajama's has to run laps with that psycho upperclassman on Monday!"

"Cheater!"

"Me!? NEVER!"

Hours later, Naruto awoke to the scent of blood hanging heavily in the air and the sense that someone was in his apartment. Carefully sitting up so as to not wake Sasuke, the blonde blinked sleepily around the room until his gaze landed on a familiar figure in the corner.

He frowned, "Itachi-nii, is that you?"

"My apologies Naruto-kun, I did not mean to wake you." The teenager seemed to be in full mission-gear, hitai-ate tied in its usual lopsided way. He was also carrying a long-term mission pack. "I simply wished to check on my brother."

Naruto made a quiet noise of understanding and whispered back, "Oh, are you leaving on a mission? Do you want me to wake him up?"

Itachi shook his head. "No, that is not necessary. Unfortunately, I do not have the time for long goodbyes. I've been assigned a long-term mission and must leave immediately. Seeing him will have to be enough."

"Do you know how long you'll be gone? A few months?"

The elder boy reached across the blonde to brush some hair from Sasuke's face, a deep sadness flickering briefly in his eyes. "Possibly even longer."

The following silence weighed heavily in Naruto's heart and Yousuke whispered to him that something wasn't right. Something about this whole situation was very wrong indeed.

"Naruto-kun?"

The blonde startled and looked up at Itachi. "Y-Yeah Itachi-nii?"

"Promise me that no matter what happens, you'll always be by my ototou's side? That you'll take care of him, keep him safe from himself and others? To the best of your ability?"

He gave a nervous laugh, "Itachi-nii, it's like you think you're never coming back or something. After all, isn't that your job?"

The teenager finally managed to pull his stare away from his brother to look the blonde in the eyes. "Naruto-kun... please. Promise me."

'Naru-chan, don't you freaking dare! NARUTO, NO!'

"Okay, Itachi-nii. I promise." He couldn't bring himself to feel an ounce of regret for going against Yousuke's wishes as he watched Itachi almost sag in relief. He couldn't, wouldn't back out now. Misaki-nee had raised him better than that anyway. The Uchiha heir gave a small smile and ruffled his blonde locks.

"Thank you Naruto-kun. I have faith that you will keep your oath." At the determined expression on the boy's face, Itachi's smile grew. "You're such a good boy Naruto. And I know that you will grow to become an even greater man. Do not let the cruel words of the villagers tell you otherwise, alright?"

Naruto nodded. "Okay Itachi-nii. I won't listen to them anymore."

"You're such a good boy, how anyone could treat you so harshly is beyond me. Your parents would be so proud of you Naruto. So, so proud. Don't forget that." He paused, ignoring the blonde's quiet stammers of confusion. "I have to go now, Naruto-kun. Please, remember your promise." With one last caress of his brother's face, the teenager disappeared.

It was only several minutes later when Naruto finally realized what exactly had been wrong with the situation.

The smell of blood had come from Itachi.

AN 2: So, I'm not quite sure as to whether or not I'll continue this. Mostly, this was just written to get the idea out of my head but if enough people like it, I am perfectly willing to write more. Please just remember to leave a comment or review giving your opinion!

1. Yousuke means 'meditate like the ocean.

2. Sango means 'coral.'

3. Kyou-Japanese unisex name meaning 1) 'apricot', 2) 'capital,' 3) 'cooperation,' or 4) 'village.' For my purposes, I have chosen 'village' for this fic.

4. Hamasaki-hama meaning "beach, seashore" and saki meaning "Cape or Peninsula." Makoto-Japanese unisex name meaning "sincere or true." Because I love irony.

5. "Just because you think it, doesn't make it true." A quote from my therapist. As someone with mild social-anxiety, low self-esteem, and diagnosed Dysthymia, I tend to think negative thoughts or tell myself what other people MUST be thinking about me, must be judging every little action I make. Logically, I know that these thoughts are false and most likely that stranger at the end of the grocery aisle hasn't even noticed I'm there, but it is one thing to know something and another to know.

Look at what a childhood of bullying and peer-induced isolation to the point of becoming the school pariah does to a person.

AND ON THAT PLEASANT NOTE, HAVE A GOOD DAY.